Pressure bulkheads are used in vehicles, such as aircraft, to separate a pressurized compartment from an unpressurized compartment, and to provide sufficient structural strength to support the strains and loads on the vehicle resulting from pressurization. In one typical application, a pressure bulkhead is mounted within an aircraft fuselage and attached to the outer skin of the aircraft. Many pressure bulkheads have a partial spherical or substantially spherical shape with a curved or dome-shaped surface. Such bulkheads are mounted in an aircraft fuselage with the concave (or inner curved) side of the dome-shaped surface facing the pressurized compartment and the convex (or outwardly curved) side of the dome-shaped surface facing the non-pressurized compartment.
Traditional pressure bulkhead designs utilize metallic or composite stiffening members (or stiffeners) that are mechanically fastened, co-bonded or co-cured to a web that forms the dome-shaped surface, and typically are composed of multiple sections and parts. Bolting, co-bonding and co-curing stiffeners adds cost, labor and flow time to pressure bulkhead development and manufacturing processes, and often result in heavy and complex pressure bulkhead designs. Other designs that use composite layups with hand laid, grid based patterns result in inherent structural inefficiencies.
It is therefore desirable to provide a lightweight and low-cost pressure bulkhead having relatively simple construction and sufficient structural strength to meet load and strain requirements of a pressurized compartment in a vehicle.